Those who felt let down by Newt Gingrich’s muted performance at Monday night’s debate—and, really, who among us did not?—should expect to get their money’s worth tonight. Live from Jacksonville at 8 p.m., it’s Wolf Blitzer’s turn to be Newt’s media-elite piñata (and, happily, audience reactions will not be discouraged this time). But the former house speaker will have many more targets at which to aim his barbs—especially after a furious two-day bombardment by Mitt Romney and the right-wing media elite. Matt Drudge, Ann Coulter, R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., and the editors of The National Review—to name a few—have declared all-out war on Gingrich. “Our Bill Clinton,” Tyrrell called him. “Re-elect Obama: Vote Newt!” Coulter declared. The Drudge Reportfeatured no fewer than 14 anti-Gingrich headlines at mid-afternoon today. On a day when Gingrich’s campaign admitted that he lied to John King last Thursday about offering ABC News interviews with people who would contradict his second wife’s accusations—the day after he had to retract an attack ad calling Romney “anti-immigrant” at Marco Rubio’s behest—and with polls showing his South Carolina momentum slipping away, Gingrich’s ire-meter will surely be dialed up to 10.

So They Say

“The selection of a Republican candidate for the presidency of this globalized and expansive empire is—and I mean this seriously—the greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that has ever been.”